SANDS: Song soars with dramatic Cadet chess victory

It came down to one game for all the marbles in the final round of the U.S. Cadet Championship in Rockville, Maryland, last week, with co-leaders Edward Song of Michigan and Kapil Chandran of Connecticut paired against each other. Song, who relinquished the lead with a painful loss the previous round, rebounded with a nice win to take the title in a tournament featuring some of the country’s best players younger than 16.

FM Cameron Wheeler of California and NM Christopher Gu of Rhode Island finished a half-point behind the winner at 6-3, with Chandran and FM Ruifeng Li of Texas tied for fourth at 5½-3½.

The big drama was in the final round, but the new Cadet champ’s most dominating performance came in his Round 5 demolition of Massachusetts NM Mika Brattain. In a Caro-Kann Advanced line first popularized by English GM Nigel Short, Black badly neglects his development to snatch a pawn on Move 7 and never recovers.

Black’s 15…d3 is meant to disrupt the coordination of White’s position, but only opens new lines for Song to exploit: 16. Bd1 Nh6 17. Qb2! (clearing a path for the bishop to a4) Be6 18. Ba4, threatening to load up on c6 with 19. Na5. But Black’s 19…Bd5 (see diagram) only causes another part of the Black boat to spring a leak.

The 115th U.S. Open in Orlando, Florida, claims the spotlight starting this weekend, but the Maryland chess summer is by no means over. The third annual Washington International starts Aug. 9 in Rockville, with a host of top grandmasters already committed to play. For more information, check out the Maryland Chess Association website at mdchess.com.

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We mentioned last week that GM Alex Sherzer, the pride of Fallston, Maryland, was a past winner of the Cadet, capturing the title in 1986 at New York’s venerable Marshall Chess Club. Sherzer’s games from the event aren’t listed on the massive chessgames.com database, but we found one of his wins over Arizona master Robby Adamson from an old New York Times column from Robert Byrne.

In both the 1986 and 2014 Cadet tournaments, the positional play is unexpectedly sophisticated from such young contestants. In what evolves into a Scheveningen Sicilian, Sherzer as White finds a Capablanca-esque mini-combination whose point is solely to win the two bishops in an open position.

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About the Author

Raised in Northern Virginia, David R. Sands received an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He worked as a reporter for several Washington-area business publications before joining The Washington Times.

At The Times, Mr. Sands has covered numerous beats, including international trade, banking, politics ...